The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment is a part of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. The right to privacy is not specifically mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. However, the central purpose of this amendment was to deny the government the power to make general searches. The language of this amendment bans unreasonable searches and seizures and guarantees that no warrants can be issued without satisfying the requirements for probable cause. Also, the warrents must describe particularly the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. The Fourth Amendment grew out of strong objections to writs of assistance and general warrants by the colonists. Permitted by the English Parliament, the writs of assistance gave crown officials, and even innkeepers in port towns, the authority to enter any home and search and seize belongings without probable cause. General warrants were used against political and religious dissidents, also.

In 1662, the English Parliament made writs of assistance into law. This codification allowed royalist judges to authorize police and customs inspectors to make general searches of all houses for contraband and other illegal items. Strong resistance throughout the colonies in the 1760s to the general searches led to the states' efforts to curtail severely search and seizure authority in their constitutions.

As a result of this strong sentiment against searches without due process, James Madison introduced the initial pr

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e whatever force is necessary to arrest a fleeing person suspected of committing a felony, but not when the fleeing person is suspected of committing a misdemeanor under common law. The Fourth Amendment limits how a police officer may seize an unarmed suspect who is not dangerous. Deadly force may be used only when the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm either to the officer or others. Not every use of force by the police violates Fourth Amendment rights. However, police are not to use more force than necessary. In discussing reasonable and unreasonable searches, Peltrason distinguishes between reasonable searches, which are based on a search warrant and probable cause, and unreasonable ones, which are not (1994, p. 254). Although two cases, Mincey v. Arizona 437 US 385 (1970) and Thompson v Louisiana 469 US 17 (1985) set the precedent that the cardinal principle of searches conducted outside of the judicial process, without prior approval by a judge or a magistrate, are inherently unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment subject only to a few specifically established and well-defined exceptions. However, the number of exceptions continues to grow, and they are n

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